


a tale of two queens

by girl412



Category: Septimus Heap - Angie Sage
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/F, being in love with a ghost is HARD kids !, some angst i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 11:56:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15885552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl412/pseuds/girl412
Summary: Cerys may be dead, but Marcia's love for her is not, and never will be.





	a tale of two queens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theoncomingwolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoncomingwolf/gifts).



> this is a birthday gift for me and my friend Hannah (lesbianmarciaoverstrand on tumblr), because we apparently share a birthday!!! 
> 
> there's also some... uh... smut in part 3, which might be the first time anyone in this fandom has written actual smut so. use your discretion if you wanna read that, i guess.
> 
> there will hopefully be a part 2 to this, featuring Septimus and Jenna dealing with the fact that their second mothers are gay HAHAH yeah it'll be LIT if i actually get round to writing it.  
> hope you like this!!!!!

1

Marcia curls up against her cushion, closing her eyes. She’s aware of the ache between her ribs, how it would’ve hurt less if someone punched her between the eyes. For all of her intensity, Marcia has only been in love once. Sure, there were times when she was younger and she’d seen pretty girls and her heart had done a little flutter thing, but there was only one woman for her; one woman who owned her heart. One woman who is now dead.

She’s lying on the bed contemplating the misery of this, her hands feeling strangely empty since she’s done the deed of depositing the baby princess with her new guardians. The girl had Cerys’s eyes, and Marcia smiles through the ache. She wants to yell to Alther, to tell him that she’s going drinking, but of course, he’s dead too. She can’t go to the throne room yet, so she paces, she paces, she paces. Wearing her heels down until they’re stumps.

She finds herself at Sally Mullin’s place, and she stares out of the window. It’s only an year and a day, she tells herself, only 367 days before she can see her mentor and best friend Alther again, and her lover, the deceased Queen Cerys. It’s brutal, she thinks, how you can lose your entire family in a matter of seconds. She catches a glimpse of Sarah Heap, baby bundled to her chest, talking to Sally Mullin, and for a moment feels a hot spike of jealousy. Sarah will probably never feel this alone in her life, she finds herself thinking bitterly. Sarah Heap, with her heart full of love and her home full of children and a past that doesn’t include running away from home in the middle of a thunderstorm, with magic buzzing in her veins.

Marcia closes her eyes, promises herself that she won’t cry. ****

2

Marcia’s lying in her bed staring at the ceiling. It’s been three years since the day, and she hasn’t seen Cerys anywhere, and she’s almost given up at this point. Alther tells her to be patient, tells her that the Queen’s ghost is spying, lurking around trying to gather information about the fascist regime that’s running and the greasy necromancer who makes them both want to puke. 

She’s not expecting the warmth that comes from the door opening, except that the door is still closed. It feels like summer’s come early, but Marcia doesn’t move. She doesn’t dare hope.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Cerys’s disembodied voice says, and she sits up so fast that she nearly hits her head against the bedpost. “Trust you to become a woman of authority the moment I stopped being one.” 

Marcia laughs, but it sounds watery, and she supposes she should be horrified to have made such a sound. She grins at the ghost, and rolls her eyes. “You’ll always be royalty, you know that, don’t you?” 

“Yes, but I’m _dead_ ,” Cerys points out, as if Marcia could’ve forgotten. 

“I’m aware of that. Before you ask, your daughter is safe.” Marcia smiles in a way that would be reassuring if Cerys wasn’t used to Marcia’s agitation. Her paranoia was practically transparent.

“Marcie, let me guess. No-one’s safe anymore, are they?” 

Marcia nods and fidgets a little with the edge of her blanket. It’s sometimes easy to revert to this awkward bumbling version of herself, back when she barely knew Cerys as anyone except The Queen, and back when all she was was a Hopeful. 

“I’m sure you’re doing your best.” Cerys’s gaze is trusting and kind, and it grounds Marcia, who nods.

“I’ve missed you,” she says. She doesn’t say _I want to kiss you, I want to touch you, I want you to touch me, I’m in love with you_  but it’s understood. She can hear it echo in Cerys’s bittersweet voice, soft as honey, as she says, “Love, that’s mutual.” 

3 

“Touch yourself for me,” Cerys commands. 

Things are bad in the Queendom. The Supreme Custodian is lingering like a foul odour and anything could go horribly wrong any minute. The princess is now five years old. Marcia hasn’t seen her and isn’t keeping tabs on her for fear of raising suspicion.  This is a distraction they both need.

Marcia lies back against her sofa, unbuttoning her cloak and deliberately pushing her robes out of the way. She keeps her boots on as she slips one hand under the waistband of her purple underwear, wishing belatedly that she’d worn lingerie for the dead queen’s bootycall. 

Cerys crouches over, her ghostly head at level with Marcia’s hips. 

Marcia idly moves her hand, her fingers trailing her most sensitive regions. She’s never been a big fan of getting herself off, but she’s never done it with a ghost watching her; that too, a ghost she’s been in love with almost all her life. She slips one finger into herself, and then adds another. 

Cerys is watching with unabashed arousal, making soft noises of wonder as she takes in the scene in front of her. At one point, she even begins the dirty talk, and it’s so much like when she was alive that Marcia nearly cries. 

“I bet you feel good, hm?” Cerys says. “I bet that finger believes in heaven now. Yeah, move it like that, love. Close your eyes and pretend it’s me touching you, or you touching me. Yes, exactly. Don’t you look beautiful, coming undone for me? That’s it, you’re so close. Come on Marce. Just a little longer, now.” 

Cerys brings Marcia to orgasm by passing through her, pressing one ghostly hand against her inner thighs and trailing kisses starting from her hips and moving down.

“Cerys,” Marcia says, her voice almost a whimper. “You feel like a tornado.” 

“You were always kinky for me, weren’t you?” Cerys says mischievously, looking up, her eyes looking more alive than Marcia had ever felt as she made eye contact, and that’s all it takes for Marcia to come with so much intensity that she blacks out. 

When she regains consciousness, Cerys is running her hands through her hair, and it feels like being outdoors on a breezy day. 

“Can’t believe you got your aftercare from a ghost,” Cerys says, almost laughingly. “Marcia Overstrand, I always thought you’d be vanilla.”

Marcia snorts and wonders, as she lies there, which part of her has _ever been_ vanilla. Not just in sex, but in anything. 

4

So that’s her sex life, and it’s not bad, all things considered. It’s quite a feat to have sex with someone who doesn’t have a body, but they manage. They’re both strong women, after all. They’ve always known what they want and how to get it, and this time, all they want is each other. 

Marcia’s body aches with the loneliness of not being held by Cerys’s arms, and Cerys seems to be going sparse watching everything collapse and knowing that, thanks to the Queen Rules, she can’t interfere. 

It’s enough, though. Cerys smiles at Marcia, and Marcia smiles back. 

Their halfway relationship is enough. 

E P I L O G U E  

Jenna Heap, age 15, sits there in Marcia’s room, at Marcia’s desk. No, wait – on Marcia’s desk. 

“What did my mother mean to you?”

Marcia takes a small breath, and then another. It’s going to be _fine._ “I loved her,” she says. 

Cerys’s ghost is in the room,  just not visible to Jenna. She’s looking right at Marcia though, and she’s smirking. 

Marcia wouldn’t have it any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe i wrote Marcia smut, wow , new year new me and all that  
> hit me up @ wendronwitch on tumblr so we can all be Gay For Marcia together :^)


End file.
